Practices
Novena
Devotional Practices
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Origin 1100 to 1700
Nine consecutive days (or nine weeks, or nine hours) of prayer for a particular intention, often addressed to a saint or under a title of Christ or Mary, and typically using a set text. The number nine recalls the nine days the apostles and Mary spent in prayer between the Ascension and Pentecost, which the tradition treats as the first novena. Some novenas are attached to a specific promise of intercession.
Facts
Origins
Origin Period Origin PeriodA medieval Western practice, much multiplied from the seventeenth century 1 Place of OriginA medieval Western practice, much multiplied from the seventeenth century. Status
Status TodayLiving tradition, practised today 2 Practice
Who Performs It ObligationOptional and voluntary 1Tradition: Roman Catholicism FrequencyAs the occasion requires 1 Solitary or CommunalPerformed alone or together 1 Identity
AttributionThe number nine recalls the nine days the apostles and Mary spent in prayer between the Ascension and Pentecost, which the tradition treats as the first novena. 1 Attributions
TraditionRoman Catholicism, a nine day cycle of prayer directed to God, the Virgin Mary or a saint, seeking a specific intention or preparing for a feast. 1 Scholarship and Forensics
Scholarly NoteThe nine-day pattern is traced to the nine days the apostles and Mary spent in prayer between the Ascension and Pentecost, which the tradition treats as the first novena, so a later nine-day devotion is understood to imitate that biblical waiting rather than to derive the number independently. 1 Learn More
Nine Days of Prayer
A novena is a Christian devotion, characteristic of Roman Catholicism, consisting of prayers repeated over nine successive days, or on nine occasions, for a particular intention, whether petition for a specific need, preparation for a feast, or thanksgiving. The word comes from the Latin for nine, and the number is traditionally connected with the nine days the apostles and Mary are described as spending in prayer between Christ's Ascension and the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, taken as the scriptural model of a set period of persevering, expectant prayer. Novenas are addressed to God, often through the intercession of Mary or a particular saint associated with the need in question, and each usually has its own fixed set of prayers.
The devotion embodies the Christian teaching on persevering prayer, the insistence, drawn from Christ's parables, that one should ask repeatedly and not lose heart, giving that perseverance a defined, achievable shape of nine days that a worshipper can undertake and complete.
Two Novenas with a Promise Attached
Most novenas are simply nine days of prayer for whatever intention the person praying brings to it, but a small number carry a specific promise of the saint or devotion's intercession attached to the prayer itself, and these are the novenas that became genuinely famous rather than remaining one option among many. The Miraculous Medal Novena, addressed to Mary under the title connected to a medal reportedly revealed to Catherine Laboure in Paris in 1830, is prayed by millions annually, most visibly at the Miraculous Medal Shrine in Philadelphia and at parishes worldwide holding a perpetual weekly novena rather than only a once-off nine-day observance, a format that turned a nine-day prayer into an ongoing weekly devotion attended continuously rather than completed and set aside.
The Nine First Fridays devotion, connected to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and traced to visions reported by Margaret Mary Alacoque in seventeenth-century France, carries a specific promise recorded in her account, that a person who receives communion on the first Friday of nine consecutive months will be granted final repentance before death, a promise stated with unusual precision that has made the devotion a distinctly popular and specifically counted practice, with parishes tracking attendance across the nine months and devotional literature giving detailed instructions on how to restart the count if a month is missed. Both cases show the same pattern: an apparition or reported private revelation supplies a specific promise, and the promise, more than the underlying prayer content itself, is what drove each novena's popularity far beyond the ordinary run of nine-day devotions with no comparable claim attached.
Cross-Tradition Connections
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